How to use the Device Manager

The Device Manager (DM) is a graphical user interface to manage networking devices using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). DM provides the following features:

Physical View
Edit Configuration
Performance Monitoring

(A Note on the Screenshots: the following images show DM running under Windows and Unix CDE.)

1. Physical View

The following generic device illustrates the physical view. This device has elements - cards and ports - which have state (up, down, etc.).

The main window has:

menubar
toolbar
physical view
popup menus
status line.

Menubar

Every device has the following menu structure listed below. Some devices may add to this list; please see Help->Device for more details on the capabilities of specific devices.

Device. These commands apply to the entire device.

Open. Display an Open Device window.
Open Last. Reopen a device from the last 14 devices successfully opened.
Properties. Set SNMP properties.
Refresh. Re-open the device and update the physical view.
Trap Log. Display the trap log window.
Print Chassis. Print chassis to current printer. (Unix only)
Exit. Quit application.

Edit. (Optional) Edit selected elements' attributes in view.

Select. Select all elements in view.

Graph. (Optional) Graph selected elements'attributes in view.
Help

Contents. Display this help.
Device. Display device-specific help.
Legend. Display state color legend.
About. Display version information.

In addition, some devices may add specific menus that relate only to that device or family of devices.

Open Device

Enter the device name and press the Open button. The community strings will default to public and private respectively. Many devices default their read communities to public, however it is unlikely (and insecure) that a device's write community will be set to private. You can change the default community strings in the initialization file ($DMPATH/dm.ini).

HP OpenView users only: DM will query the OpenView SNMP database for the device's community strings.

As characters are typing into the community entry fields they are echoed with asterisks to protect the password.

If a device fails to respond, DM will display a timeout message. Usually timeouts indicate that you need to increase your retransmission retries and timeout interval because the network is slow. However you will also get a timeout if you have failed to supply the correct read community. It is also possible (though rare) that device is not running SNMP or that the SNMP process has crashed.

An attempt to open an unsupported device will respond with an unsupported error message.

Print

This window will vary according to Operating System. On Unix systems, xgrabsc(1), xpr(1), and lpr(1) are used to capture and print the chassis image in PostScript to a file or printer. Graphs internally generate PostScript and just use lpr(1) to print.

Properties

Status Poll Enable is enable or disable the poll.
Status Poll Interval is the number of seconds before the device is queried for the element state (card, ports, etc). 0 disables this feature. You must not set the poll interval lower than retries x timeout, as this may cause DM to poll before it has received a response from the device.
Retry Count is the number of times we will attempt to contact the device before timing out.
Timeout is the number of seconds we will wait before resending a message to the device.
Retransmission Strategy determines how much time to wait before retransmitting requests. Eg, linear is 9 seconds (3x3), superlinear is 18 seconds (3+6+9).
Hotswap Poll Interval is the number of seconds before the device is queried for new or removed elements (eg cards). 0 disables this feature.
Max Traps in Log sets the maximum number of SNMP traps that can be displayed in the Log window. (When the Log window reaches this number, the oldest traps are removed to make way for the newest.)
Display SNMP Errors In allows SNMP errors to be displayed in the status area or the error window.
Click Table Header to select or sort.

Select is set to select the table columns by clicking on the table header.
Sort is set to sort the table columns by clicking on the table header.

SNMP Trace PDU allows SNMP packets to be traced incoming or outgoing.

If DM successfully registers with the device for traps, the status poll and hotswap interval will default to 5 and 10 minutes respectively. (This conserves bandwidth but provides a safeguard against incorrectly displaying an element's state because a trap has been lost.)

Toolbar

Toolbar buttons are usually a subset of the menu commands. Like menus, every device has the following commands. Certain devices may add to this list by inserting their own commands; please see Help->Device for more details.

: Open Device
: Help Contents. Display this file.
: Edit selected element
: Graph selected element
: Telnet to device. Communicate to a remote system using the TELNET protocol.
: Display trap log

Legend and Physical View

When a device is first opened, DM discovers the physical elements present. These elements - cards, ports, power supplies, etc - are then displayed in the physical view window. Some of these elements have state, ie they are behaving normally or abnormally. This state is show by color. The meaning of these colors is shown on the legend which can be accessed from the Help menu.

fail (red) means that the element is behaving abnormally. The element should be examined to determine the reason for failure.
down (brown) means that the element is disabled. This is normal behaviour.
up (green) means that the element is enabled and operating normally.
testing means that this element is in diagnostic mode.
dormant means that this element is read for service.

Fail and Up are universally displayed as red or green. DM follows the HP OpenView's default color conventions.

Popup Menus

Popup menus can be displayed over elements in the physical view by holding down the right mouse button. They serve two purposes:

Short cut to edit, graph windows.
They can be customized to place common element operations - eg enable or reset - into a short cut.

However, popup menus - because they are not immediately apparent to the user - never contain commands that can't be accessed elsewhere.

Status Line

The status line is used to communicate short-term messages to the user. Non-catastrophic errors (ie those that don't require an error window or prompt) are also displayed here:

noSuchName. this usually occurs when the object you are referring to doesn't exist on the device.
timeout. this usually occurs when the:

network is slow
no route to device
incorrect read community string
(SET only) incorrect write community string

badVal. the device won't permit you to modify or insert this value.

(XXX SNMP V2 has refined the meanings of some of these generic errors:)

2. Edit Configuration

Many networking devices have the following physical elements: chassis, cards, and ports. Each of the elements can have both physical and logical attributes associated with them. These attributes are grouped into categories which can be viewed and modified.

Single Element Editing

There are several alternative ways to edit an element:

Select the element by clicking the left mouse button over the element and press the Edit toolbar button.
Double-click the left mouse button over the element.
Select the element and choose the Edit->{element name} menu.
Press the right mouse button over the element and choose the Edit menu item from the popup menu.

For example, a port edit window looks like this:

The title describes the device name, operation (edit or graph), and the element name.
This element has three categories associated with it. The first, Interface, is currently selected. Click the left mouse button on the tabs to change category.
The current category displays pairs of label, values. The values can either be read-only or read-write. You can not edit read-only values. Read-write values can be displayed as a list of choices or in an entry field. You can modify these values by selecting a different choice or by typing into the entry field. (Altered values are displayed in bold (underline in Windows) typeface. After they have been successfully modified on the device, they will resume their normal typeface.)
The current element instance (eg port number) can be changed to select another element of the same type.
Buttons:

Apply will send any modified values to the device. (This button appears if there are read-write values in the current category. )
Close will close the window. The black ring indicates that item has focus when the window is first first displayed. Press return in the window to close it.
Refresh will update the values from the device. (The first time a category is displayed, the values are retrieved from the device.)
Help will display a category-specific help screen.

Errors retrieving or modifying values to or from the device will be displayed on the window's status line.

Table Editing

Some attribute categories have a table of attributes associated with them. These attributes are displayed in a two dimensional grid. Tables are not unlike simple edit categories but they do have the following differences:

Read-write values use the entry field's background color to identify them. Choice items are selected with the right mouse button, regular read-write items can simply be typed into the cell.
The current cell has an thick black border.
Buttons:

Replicate allows one cell to be copied to many cells. To indicate a destination, hold the left mouse button down and drag over the target cells. Release, then move to the source cell. You should see a single white cell and multiple yellow cells. Press the Replicate button to copy the contents of the white cell to the yellow cells. (This button will only appear on read-write tables.)
Delete will delete the current row. (This button will only appear on read-write tables.)
Insert will prompt for the indeces and any read-write or read-create values before inserting a row into the table. Press the Insert button to create the row, press Close to cancel the operation. (This button will only appear on read-write tables.)

(See Table Manipulation)

Multiple Element Editing

More than one element can be selected at the same time by:

Holding down the Shift or Control key when left-mouse clicking over an element. This acts as a selection toggle. Shift-Clicking on an unselected element will add it to the selection list, shift-clicking it again will remove it from the selection list.
Marquee selection. Holding the left mouse button down and drag. Elements enclosed within the selected area will be selected. (Note that you can't select different elements - eg cards and ports - together.)
Select all elements of a given type from the Select menu.

Once you have selected several elements, you can display the Edit window in the same manner as a single element edit by toolbar button, menubar item, or popup menu item. Double-click will always select a single element.

The five ports that we selected in this example are displayed in a table. The column titles describe the value names. The row titles describe the element instances. Tables are identical to lists with the following exceptions:

The number of rows is known in advance, so multiple selection windows will grow to fill the screen width and height.
You can't insert or delete from multiple-selection tables.
Custom categories can't be displayed.

3. Performance Monitoring

It is important to be able to view numeric element attributes in a graphic fashion for easier comprehension. DM provides you with the ability to view this data in Piecharts, 2-D line and barcharts. The Graph window structure has much in common with Edit windows.

Single Element Graphing

There are several ways in which to graph an element:

Select the element by clicking the left mouse button over the element and press the Graph toolbar button.
Select the element and choose the Graph->{element name} menu.

Press the right mouse button over the element and choose the Graph menu item from the popup menu.

For example, a port graph window looks like this:

In the case of a single element, seven columns of numbers are displayed for each attribute:

Absolute. The actual counter value on the device.
Cumulative. The counter increase we've seen since this window was displayed.
Average. The average value we've seen so far.
Minimum. The smallest value we've seen so far.
Maximum. The largest value we've seen so far.
LastValue. The last value.

Rows, columns, or cells may be selected in the table. The selected cells can be displayed in a line, bar, or pie chart by clicking one of the buttons at the lower left-hand side of the table.

The poll interval can be changed to suspend, increase, or decrease the time period between counter value requests.

Line chart.

The element instance is located at the top left hand corner of the graph. In our example, we are looking at traffic on port 1. Data values are read from left to right. At selected intervals - depending on graph width - the time is displayed in hour:minute:second using the 24 hour clock. The attributes that we are monitoring are displayed in the legend located in the graph's right margin. Graph windows are resizable.

You can see attribute values directly by pressing the left mouse button on the line or barchart.

We also have two new buttons:

Print generates a PostScript image of the graph and displays the print window.
Options allows you to alter some of the graph options:

Display: whether the following graph elements are displayed:

legend: dataset colors and names
grid lines: extend from the major and minor ticks of each axis horizontally or vertically across the plotting area.
x axis: ticks, tick labels, and xaxis title
y axis: ticks, tick labels, and yaxis title

Position Legend: which edge of the graph to display
Legend Relief: legend box appearence
X Axis Label Rotation: degrees to rotate the tick labels. use 45 or 90 to fit more labels in the same width.
Y Axis Scale: use log scale to display datasets of wildly different values in the same graph.
Num X Axis Elements. (Linechart only). The number of x values displayed per dataset. A larger number will provide more history.
Barchart (Barchart only). How bars are displayed.

Display: show dataset in graph. (DM will continue to poll for the values, however.)
Color: dataset color.
Symbol: choose from no (default) or eight symbol types.
Linewidth: choose from one (default) or zero, two to four.

Other graph options can be modified by editing the dm.ini file.

Multiple Element Graphing

Just as with Edits, you can select a number of elements and see them displayed in one graph, however only the last values are displayed for each selected element.

The preceeding graph is monitoring ports 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 for same attributes as the single port example.